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July 29, 2024
It’s All About the Base(line)
This is Part 5 in the THB series — Climate Fueled Extreme Weather. You can find Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here. Each can be read on their own, but I encourage you to start from the beginning as each installment draws on the ones before. If you have made it this…
July 25, 2024
Why Climate Misinformation Persists
In 2001, I participated in a roundtable discussion hosted at the headquarters of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) with a group of U.S. Senators, the Secretary of Treasury, and about a half-dozen other researchers. The event was organized by Idaho Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) following the release of a short NAS report on climate to help…
July 22, 2024
We Don’t Need No Stinking Science
This is Part 4 in the THB series — Climate Fueled Extreme Weather. You can find Part 1 here Part 2 here and Part 3 here. Each can be read on their own, but I encourage you to start from the beginning as each installment draws on the ones before. Everyone knows that in recent years climate change has…
July 18, 2024
Regulation and Utility Performance
Last week’s outages in Houston due to Hurricane Beryl were agonizing and frustrating. The Category 1 hurricane made landfall on July 8 and maintained hurricane strength until it reached Houston, delivering 10-15 inches of rain in some areas and resulting in 2.7 million power outages in the region. Four days later, over one million customers were still without…
July 15, 2024
It’s Later Than You Think
Today, I discuss the concept of the “time of emergence” for the detection of a signal of a change in climate in observations and projections. Our early work in this area led to some surprising results (at least to me!) and profoundly shaped how I think about the detection and attribution of changes in the…
July 11, 2024
Data Center Electricity Use II: How Are Electrons Like Fish?
Growing data center energy use continues to make headlines. In my first post on data center electricity use, I focused on the technologies that make AI possible and on broad trends in data center investment and electricity demand forecasts out to 2028. If you subscribe to The Dispatch, they had a very good AI energy use…
July 8, 2024
Schrödinger’s Climate Cat
In May, I testified before the Senate Budget Committee and summarized what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said about trends in drought. My testimony included the figure below showing a decrease in the areal extent of extreme drought conditions in the United States. I also included another figure that showed an increase in extreme drought conditions across the United States. Completing…
July 3, 2024
Separation of Powers and Division of Labor
On Friday June 28, the Supreme Court issued their 6-3 ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, overturning the deference to administrative agencies established in the Chevron v. Environmental Protection Agency ruling in 1984. So far opinions vary on how big a change this will ultimately be (courts have not been relying much on Chevron deference…
July 2, 2024
Climate Fueled Extreme Weather
It is now a ubiquitous cultural ritual to blame any and every weather event on climate change. Those hot days? Climate change. That hurricane? Climate change. The flood somewhere that I saw on social media? Climate change. With today’s post, the first in a series, I go beyond the cartoonish media caricatures of climate change,…
July 1, 2024
The End of Chevron Deference
In 1981, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under Administrator Anne Gorsuch (the mother of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch), decide to change how it defined a “source” of pollution under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977. An environmental group, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) petitioned the EPA in federal court arguing that there was a…